Inside The Bills

Most NFL clubs have a pair of quality control coaches, one for each side of the ball. Bills head coach Doug Marrone chose to hire a total of four, with two on each side of the ball. Marrone explained why.

“We looked at quality control coaches as younger coaches with an opportunity of a succession plan down the road,” said Marrone. “I also look at them to handle a lot of the things I did when I was the position coach. I spent a lot of time doing it myself meaning that there were times at night when I had to spend three or four hours to draw the running game, to draw the protections, to draw routes.

“So basically what we do is we have our quality control coaches kind of split that up. We’ll have someone taking care of the front mechanics of what we need with (offensive line) coach (Pat) Morris and (tight ends) coach (Greg) Adkins and (running backs) coach (Tyrone) Wheatley. They’ll draw the front mechanics and the protections, then we’ll have someone handling our routes with the skill players.

“What that does is it really frees up the coaches to watch more film and prepare themselves for meetings. So they’re the ones that do a lot of work and nowadays in coaching you see a great sense of appreciation for what those quality control coaches do. You see a lot of those coaches really rise quickly through the ranks.”

The premise certainly makes sense. Freeing up the position coaches to more effectively instruct their players in preparation for games on Sundays is the benefit. Knowing winning games is the most important part of the equation, it would seem having additional quality control coaches enables the position coaches to accomplish that.